100 years ago: Lawrence holds 50-year reunion for raid survivors

"Lawrence today turned back in the history of the city fifty years, listened to the retelling of the stories of the bloodiest event in Kansas History, and paid tribute to the heroes of that day.... It was just such a morning as this, fifty years ago, bright and clear and the sun causing the temperature to run high, and yet how different was Lawrence this morning. Here fifty years ago maddened horsemen galloped about the streets, revolvers flashed death to the citizens who were found by the invaders, the sky was clouded with smoke from the ruins of the city's homes and business houses, the dead and wounded filled the streets, all was sorrow and anguish and death and destruction. One hundred and forty-three of the town's best citizens were stricken down, nearly two hundred homes and business houses were fired and destroyed.... The marauders plundered and murdered and burned, unmoved by pleas for mercy, the last bit of humanity seemed to have departed from their hearts.... The Lawrence of today recalled these scenes, these outrages and the heartaches and sorrows of the pioneers who began the building of what is one of the most beautiful cities of the state of Kansas. Lawrence recalled their spirit of determination and perseverance that appeared on the very next day of the raid when the re-building of Lawrence began. Then on through the years the builders have kept at work until now a city of 15,000 happy, contented people looks backward and views with pride the accomplishments of its ancestors."

"The Lawrence of today suspended business this afternoon to pay tribute to the fallen at the final meeting of the occasion which was held in the Bowersock Theater.... Many a survivor of the raid had come hundreds of miles to be in Lawrence once again.... Some of them were only children then and but faintly remember the day but others saw it all and can never forget that picture of crime and suffering.... This morning motor cars awaited the visitors and carried them to the Oak Hill cemetery where the victims of the massacre are buried. Impressive services were held around the monument at the cemetery, the graves of the victims had been marked and decorated. It was the most touching feature of the entire observance.... Last night at the Bowersock Theater the visiting survivors met together and held a reunion at which they lived that day over again in their minds. It was many an interesting story that was told at this gathering last night, many a story of narrow escape, of terror and murder and destruction. These people were here on that day, they saw the guerrillas sweep the city, they saw it afterward, a heap of cinders and ashes with the bodies of their relatives and friends and neighbors strewn about the streets where they had been shot down. To them the occasion last night was long to be remembered. They saw persons there whom they had not seen for years and it made their hearts glad and their spirits lighter than they had been for some time. They were commemorating a sad occasion in their lives, but there was much joy in the reunion last night."

"It is certain that Quantrell and his gang perpetrated the greatest outrage of border times on this day. It is known that he found Lawrence asleep, unprepared for an attack and that there was but feeble resistance offered. The causes of the raid have been very generally agreed upon.... Quantrell had a personal grievance against Lawrence.... His followers were of a class known as bushrangers and guerrillas who preyed upon border settlements and lived upon the spoils.... For years this was the only motive which Kansas people gave for the outrage upon Lawrence. But later there have been other excuses offered. Lawrence was a sort of rendezvous for a gang of outlaws, the Red-Legs they were styled, who plundered in Missouri towns and committed outrages in that state that brought shame upon the city of Lawrence and caused those who suffered to wreak their terrible revenge. But be that as it may it makes the destruction of Lawrence no less an outrage, the story of the cruelties and heartlessness of the raiders remains the same, the story of the crimes perpetrated under the guise of revenge causes one to gasp and wonder at the deeds which humans are capable of performing....

"The story in brief may be told as follows: Quantrell and his men arrived at the city limits ahead of the rising sun. It had been an all night ride for them but they had been unmolested although they had passed directly through a line of union soldiers west of Kansas City. When the band arrived at the city they halted. Quantrell looked over his army and gave the final orders, an order to kill and burn. Spare the women and children but strike down every man and leave no building standing.... Then they were off. The town was yet asleep., there were not guards to hinder the marauders or sound the warning to the citizens. There was the gallop of horses, the guerrilla band scattered, through the town they swept, their pistols speaking death to the citizens who appeared to ask the reason for the sudden outbreak. The raiders were in complete charge of the town and their work was rushed to a completion unhindered and unquestioned.... Citizens who appeared at the doors or windows of their homes were shot, those seen fleeing through the street met a similar fate. The ruffians entered the homes, hunted down the husbands and brothers with vigilance of blood-hounds and shot them down in the presence of their wives and mothers and little children. No man who would be able to strike a return blow was given quarter. Many a man was drawn from his place of hiding and shot to death. Others fled farther and escaped. Many tales of heroism from wives and mothers, stories of hair-breadth escapes, or quick wit and immediate action are told by the survivors....

"In the meantime the torch was applied, store buildings were looted first and then the wreckage was burned. Residences were not spared. In many of them the raiders suspected that men were in hiding and called upon the torch to aid them in their work of murder. Besides it had been the order that every building must be burned and mothers and their children were obliged to stand in the streets and watch their homes devastated and burned. Many tales of the merciless cruelty of the raiders are told.... Then came the retreat of the bandits, their work accomplished they must hasten back across the border for they knew that their deed in burning Lawrence would soon spread to neighboring settlements and they would be pursued. Breaking into the harness shops before they burned them they secured new bridles and saddles and many of them had informally traded their old tired out 'nags' for the horses of the citizens. They left their old saddles scattered along the streets and their old horses wandering aimlessly about the city.... Quantrell and his men rode away to the south at a rapid pace and made good their escape from Kansas and back into Missouri. Two pursuing parties were organized but they failed to head off the fleeing band and Quantrell and his men went back to their haunts with their plunder at the cost of but one life. One of the raiders being lost form the band and overtaken in a cornfield and shot later on the scene of the depredations of his comrades."

"On the morning of August 21st, 1863, this horn was new and bright and shining, but on the evening of that day, it was bent and twisted by Quantrell, the guerrilla. My father, to whom the horn belonged, narrowly escaped with his life when Quantrell's band rode by our house when they were coming into Lawrence, and then quickly harnessed his horse and prepared to escape into the country but not so quickly but what he took with him, this beloved band instrument.... We suddenly came upon two guerrillas who were engaged in the occupation of shooting down an old, harmless, unarmed man. Quick as a flash, my father was out of the buggy and into the corn by the roadside (fortunately there was no drouth in '63).... But the [hired] man in the back seat was slow witted and did not realize the situation until the guerrillas were beside the buggy and pointing their guns at him, and commanding him to get down and stand in the road, where they could more conveniently shoot him. While he was considering this accommodating move, my mother was pleading for his life, but of no avail until she turned to the men and said: 'Just see what an insignificant fellow that is; don't you think it would be a waste of powder and shot to kill him?' The guerrillas looked at the trembling face of their poor victim, and then said: 'I guess you are right, Madam; you may drive on.' And then one of them the horn from the buggy, began to blow on it, much as a small boy with a toy.... It was fitting that this part should have been played by one of the instruments of the old band that had had a share in making the state a free state. They had played for weddings, for funerals, for political gatherings, and for military drills, until their instruments were literally worn out in the public service. Then Governor Robinson, who was every way generous, came forward with a donation of $100 and the plea that new instruments might be provided for them. This plea met with a very quick response, and so one night, August 19, 1863, the old band were giving an outdoor concert from a platform near the bank of the river on Massachusetts street. It was a fine moonlight night, light as day. Everyone on the street seemed to be happy. Never had the old band played with more spirit and harmony; every number of the program was greeted with cheers and clapping of hands and calls for encore. It was a peaceful scene enough -- nothing could have seemed more secure. Mingling with that happy crowd there may have been spies of Quantrell, or perhaps even Quantrell himself; and within forty-eight hours, two members of the band were dead, and another died soon after from brutal treatment received from the guerrillas. Many, many of those who on that beautiful moonlit night listened to the music of the old band with happy hearts, two days later had hearts bowed down with bitter sorrow, for their homes were broken up, their houses were burned, and their loved ones killed by Quantrell's guerrillas."

"Among the residents of Lawrence today who were here at that time is Charley Prentice, at present desk sergeant at the city police station. Mr. Prentice has become a fixture about police headquarters and he is known by everyone in Lawrence.... He explains it as follows:

'We had heard that Quantrell was going to get us, for months it had been the talk about the town and we had made preparations to meet him. Then time passed on and we forgot about it. We talked about his coming but it was just as a week ago we mentioned casually that it was "going to rain." When Quantrell did come he found us napping completely, everything was his own way and we could not hinder him.... I was working as a clerk in Mr. J. T. Winchell's Wholesale Liquor Store on Massachusetts street, in the building the first door south of Mrs. Patee's theater of today. I was sleeping in the building on the morning of August 21, 1863. Just as day was breaking I was aroused from my sleep by the firing of guns and the shouting of men and I realized at once that Quantrell and his men were in town. Billie Spear, who slept with me that night, and I got up and crawled under the building. There was no basement to the store but the building was erected upon large piers. In a few minutes I heard the crash of glass as the marauders broke in the windows to effect an entrance into the building. The first remark that I caught, I could hear plainly through the cracks in the floor, was the leader of the gang exclaiming "hold on boys we can't get anything here by the drink, it's only wholesale here." We had signs about the room stating as much. Then one of the gang answered "well we'll take it by wholesale." And they did, but an end was soon put to the carousal by an order to set fire to the building....

"'We heard the flames above us and soon realized that we would be burned alive if we remained under there any longer. Spear was the first to leave and I followed a little later. I ran up the alley and through the Fillmore Dry Goods Store. There was a bunch of them in there helping themselves to everything that they wanted but they did not bother me. I arrived in the front end of the store just as the Eldridge House was being surrendered. I joined the prisoners and in this was was saved.... They marched us all down to the Whitney house where Quantrell had taken up his headquarters. The leader himself told us that we would not be harmed and we felt safe. A little later however a couple of drunken butchers returned and fired into the crowd killing half a dozen persons.... Shortly after Quantrell left, a party to pursue him was organized and started toward the south. A little later a second followed and I joined this one. We got as far as the present site of Ottawa when we gave up the chase and returned to Lawrence. We arrived in the city again the next day.... I never will forget the sight that met my eyes as I walked down Massachusetts street immediately after the raiders had gone. Dead and dying men were lying everywhere, many of them were lying partly in the ruins of the buildings and parts of their bodies were burned away or charred almost beyond recognition. We gathered up all the bodies and laid them along the sidewalk in the 600 block and later moved them to the Methodist church. What a task it was. Everyone was moaning and sobbing and there were tears in every eye. Those who had escaped were seeking their relatives, lost and many of them dead.... All along the street were old harness and bridles that the raiders had left when they broke into two large harness shops and secured new equipment. There were hats scattered about the street and articles of wearing apparel. Whenever the ruffians secured some new clothing they threw away their old and worn out garments. It was a terrible sight, complete ruin and desolation met our gaze.... It was a time of universal mourning in the city. There was not a single family but what had been struck in some way, some member of the family killed or the property stolen or destroyed by fire. It was such an experience as one never cares to have repeated. I never saw anything like it before or afterward and I never want to.... The gang was made up of two classes of men, the first were cold-blooded villains bent on murder and not pillage, they were desperadoes of the worst type. Then there was a class of young fellows who joined the party for the advantages of plunder and not murder. When they secured all of the booty that they could carry they were through and left, but the others sought out men for the purpose of killing them and satisfying their thirst for blood. They spared no man that came in sight. Theirs was a mission of death and they spared no pains to carry it out."

[Final address at the Massacre Memorial by widely-known Kansas orator Hon. Chas. S. Gleed, delivered at the Bowersock Theater. This speech was later said to have been the finest and most moving oration ever heard in Lawrence.]

"Joy cometh in the morning -- but not always. Fifty years ago today morning came to Lawrence, a glorious, sunlit morning, but joy came not with it. Instead, there fell upon the town a blow so brutal, so unwarranted, so unpardonable, that the world has ever remembered it with horror, and we have assembled a full half-century later to commemorate and condemn it. On that day now far distant, August 21st, 1863, the streets of the little city were baptized in blood, every home was desecrated, sorrow was supreme.

"What happened?

"Four hundred and fifty men, originally from many states, but immediately from Missouri, rode into Lawrence, murdered nearly two hundred men, wounded many more, and destroyed nearly two million dollars worth of property. Annihilation was almost accomplished.

"Who were Lawrence people and what was Lawrence that they should be so singled out for murder and destruction?

"Lawrence was a city of unusual birth and genesis. Situated forty miles west of the Missouri line, it was, considering the limited means of transportation and communication of that day, an isolated. inaccessible point well removed from the peculiar activities along the then great highway of travel, the Missouri River. A beautiful half mountain seemingly made for defense, standing sentinel-like by the banks of a great river, keeping guard over the most fertile and beautiful of all valleys, these natural features at an early day, while Kansas was still little thought of except as an obstruction to the seeker for gold in the great Rocky range beyond, fascinated the eyes of wandering settlers and invited their weary feet to rest. Here there sprang into being a city. Group after group came and saw and were satisfied to make this the place of all places -- home.

"The ruling idea of the makers of the city was not the idea of a temporary stopping place, a station on the way, but rather a place to be permanently cherished, a place to be fostered and striven for and developed and beautified, a place worthy to be lived in, and finally to die in when life's work should be done....

"The settlers here were not soldiers. They were essentially men of peace who sought a place where their own vines and fig trees could be conjured from the virgin soil. They established the church and the school as soon as their first tent stakes were driven. They did not beat their spears into pruning hooks for they had no spears. They were men and women whose forebears for the most part had not participated in war since the days of the Revolution from the Mother country. War was distasteful, almost incomprehensible to them. Their dreams were not of violence, and the victories of bloodshed. They dreamed of churches and schools and railways and mills and banks and courts and stores and droves of cattle and rich harvests -- to the end that they might conquer reluctant nature for the establishment of civilization, rather than to conquer their fellow men for the achievement of some temporary advantage. They were firm believers in Theodore Parker's wonderful prophecy made in 1856, when he said: 'In A. D. 1900. there will be 2,000,000 people in Kansas, with cities like Providence and Worcester, perhaps like Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land will be worth $20 an acre, and her total wealth will be $500,000,000 of money. Six hundred thousand children will learn in her schools. What schools, newspapers, libraries, meeting-houses -- Yes, what families of educated, happy and religious men and women! There will be a song of Freedom all around the slave states and in them slavery itself will die.'

"It was this characteristic, this devotion to peace rather than to war, that rendered these people so vulnerable to an invading force. On the near border of the greatest battleground of history, themselves in one sense the cause of the great strife, after repeated assaults from semi-civil, semi-military forces, operating in a field not more than a night's ride distant, they nevertheless went calmly to their slumbers -- nearly two thousand people -- with no guard posted and with no arms at hand, as if there could be no possible alarm more rude than the crowing of the cock, no morning salute more harsh than the greetings of family and friends.

"'Whoso is versed in sorrow, knows
That when on mortals comes a surge of ills,
Prone are they then to fear, but when the tide
Of fortune smoothly glides, fondly they trust
That the same fortune still will waft them on.'

"Lawrence had been gliding smoothly in her history for a time, and so she fondly trusted that the same good fortune would continue -- and she slept....

"Thus briefly have we pictured Lawrence -- then as now, the most beautiful city of Kansas. Why was she hated? Why was she marked for the awful work of the murderer and the incendiary?

"The people of early Lawrence were distinctly of a certain school of political conviction. They were from England, Germany, New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. They were workers. They believed in the dignity of labor. They were humanitarians. They had been pupils of such stalwart teachers as the great heads of the great Christian churches; great statesmen like Burke and Sumner; great orators like Parker and Phillips and Beecher; great agitators like Kosziusko and Garrison and Thayer. Their very town was named for Amos A. Lawrence who had given his time and his money to a cause in which they heartily believed. In short, they were, almost without exception, hostile to the institution of human slavery.

"What was slavery and whence came it?

"I need not answer in detail as to what it was, for all know. The involuntary servitude of men to men, the legal ownership of men by men, the chattelizing of human beings -- this was slavery. It is old as history. It is a wrong against humanity, a crime against nature, and unmixed evil against which moralists have contended since moralists were....

"The story of that day's work must be had of the historian, but I will give you suggestions of what happened.

"At an opening episode, the Rev. S. S. Snyder of the United Brethren Church, at work on his premises was riddled with bullets.

"Seventeen young recruits of the Fourteenth Kansas, without arms or uniform, were shot to death.

"R. C. Dix and many others at the Johnson Hotel, were promised safety if they would come out. They came out and were murdered.

"George W. Bell, County Clerk, with a friend, took refuge in the rafters of an unfinished house. One of the murderers began shooting at them. Bell recognized him as a man he had entertained at his home, and begged for his life, or at least that of his friend. They were promised immunity, but were shot as they came down.

"Mayor Collamore and an employee were driven into the well on their premises where they died. A friend, Captain J. G. Lowe, entered the well to try to save the life of the mayor, and he died.

"Levi Gates was shot and horribly mutilated.

"Dr. J. F. Griswold, S. M. Thorp, J. C. Trask and Harlow W. Baker were induced to leave Dr. Griswold's home on assurance that they would merely be taken prisoners. They were promptly shot. Griswold, Thorp and Trask were killed. Baker was shot five times, but pretending to be dead, was left still alive and finally recovered.

"Edward Fitch was called to his door and shot and burned with his home.

"James Perine and James Eldridge were clerks. After they had given the raiders all that was valuable in the store where they slept, they were shot and burned.

"Mr. Burt delivered his pocket book and received a bullet.

"Mr. Murphy handed one raider a drink of water and was repaid by instant death.

"Mr. Ellis, a blacksmith, ran into a patch of corn with his child. A raider left him dead with the child in his arms.

"Mr. Albach was ill in bed. He was carried out of his house by his family and was shot by the raiders.

"G. H. Sargent and Charles Palmer were shot. Sargent was not instantly killed. His wife fell upon his prostrate body. A murderer placed his pistol over her shoulder and sent a bullet into her husband's head.

"Mr. Thornton was shot five times and then beaten over the head, but lived many years in a frightfully crippled condition, never knowing freedom from pain.

"Mr. Langley was pursued about his home and shot a dozen times.

"John and William Laurie were murdered each begging for the life of the other. William Laurie's wife was present. One murderer said to Mrs. Laurie: 'We are fiends from Hell. Get into the house or we will serve you the same way.'

"George Holt and J. L. Crane were butchered in their shoe store.

"John Speer, Junior, seventeen years old, was wounded and fell near a burning building. He begged to be moved, but was shot to death.

"Robert Speer and his companion were sleeping in the printing office, and were murdered.

"Young Callomore, son of the Mayor, was shot and left on the road.

"John Bergen and six other prisoners were shot. All were killed except for Bergen, who was left for dead, but recovered.

"Robin Martin, twelve years of age, was shot as he ran from his home.

"Two negro preachers, Stonestreet and Oldham, were murdered, the latter in the presence of his daughter.

"Judge Louis Carpenter was pursued through his house and mortally wounded. His wife and sister threw themselves on his prostrate body, but were thrust aside enough to permit the final shots.

"Mr. Young was shot and burned, but lived.

"The last man killed, like the first, was a preacher -- Mr. Rothrock of the Dunkard denomination.

"The full story as written by Connelly fills the reader with horror. I would not if I could recite it all here. Such is not our object as this hour....

"On this awful day there was no chance for the ideal heroism of the battlefield. It was the butchery of a brave but defenseless people by an unresisted mob. Robert E. Lee would have foresworn the cause he loved and for which he fought, rather than to have sanctioned what was done that day in Lawrence. Brave men were condemned to that hardest of fates -- to die like rats in a trap. Brave men who escaped the trap could only run and hide and crawl and seek the darkened shades of pit and forest.

"Two score years and ten have gone by -- for some slowly, for others with incredible swiftness. Most of those who survived the black day of Quantrell in Lawrence have passed beyond. Those who remain have reached the time of opinion without passion, of charity for all, of forgiveness for those who knew not what they did. They well know the futility of hate and resentment. They know that the great tragedy was more the natural result, the natural working out, of certain evil ideas of ancient days, than of the immediate hostility of neighbors and fellow citizens. They know that the wretched invaders of the Quantrell gang were driven by a power further back than the near events of the great civil war.

"To those who were in the conflict, all honor. Theirs is the dignity of suffering, the majesty of achievement, the beauty of purification by fire. They have indeed been tried and found equal to the heat and burden of the day.

"Those of us who were not in the conflict, but who came later to reap where the pioneers sowed, can do no less than be profoundly thankful to those who came to prepare a place for us. We cannot forget those who died and those who suffered; those who fell in the hour of attack and those who survived, broken in health or in heart; those whose life's hopes and plans were cruelly blasted, blasted forever; those who were, in one way or another, martyrs to the cause of freedom and equality in the founding of our great state. For every one of them there must be glorious reward. In God's great economy there is no loss. Every drop of blood spilled that day nourished the flowers of liberty. Every cry of anguish reached the heart of civilization and brought help against oppression. Every golden thread of love and friendship, that day broken, was not broken, was not broken in vain, for God saw. The day of restoration and requital will come, and when that eternal day has dawned, joy, God given, unspeakable joy, will have come with the morning."

Oh Sarah! thank you so very much!!! the writing is certainly some of the most moving and intense I've ever read. " ... for God saw." I will be passing this link around! you have done exceptionally well here. I now feel much closer to the good citizens of Lawrence in that day August 21, 1863.

In many of them
the raiders suspected that men were in hiding and called upon the torch to aid them in their work of murder.

"To those who were in the conflict, all honor. Theirs is the dignity of suffering, the majesty of achievement, the beauty of purification by fire. They
have indeed been tried and found equal to the heat and burden of the day.

"Those of us who were not in the conflict, but who came later to reap where the pioneers sowed, can do no less than be profoundly thankful to those who
came to prepare a place for us. We cannot forget those who died and those who suffered; those who fell in the hour of attack and those who survived, broken
in health or in heart; those whose life's hopes and plans were cruelly blasted, blasted forever; those who were, in one way or another, martyrs to the
cause of freedom and equality in the founding of our great state. For every one of them there must be glorious reward. In God's great economy there is
no loss. Every drop of blood spilled that day nourished the flowers of liberty. Every cry of anguish reached the heart of civilization and brought help
against oppression. Every golden thread of love and friendship, that day broken, was not broken, was not broken in vain, for God saw. The day of restoration
and requital will come, and when that eternal day has dawned, joy, God given, unspeakable joy, will have come with the morning."

---so moving. I would that today's lawencians were equally as religious as those of one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago. for most, their abolitionist passions sprang from their Christian faith. they acted on their faith. many free soil settlers to kansas were sent here with a Bible and a rifle.

Years later, Quantrill's raiders held reunions to celebrate their successful raid on Lawrence. There were some calls from Lawrence for them to be arrested and tried for murder, but that never happened. But at least, Quantrill himself was never able to attend any of the reunions, because he died less than two years after the raid.

The 1863 massacre took the lives of about 1 in 5 male residents of Lawrence, yet the city's population more than tripled by 1870. Clearly there was a massive infusion of human and financial capital following Quantrill's raid, but I can find no record of the stories of those who arrived here to rebuild.